Spiders and intruders and bears oh my!

Hey all!

Sorry about the radio silence on the blog. I spent the last week at Meredith's host families house and their internet was broken. Thus, blogging became a low priority. All in all, life in Manhattan is going alright. I am finally starting to have some relationships that are deepening and I am starting to get to more spiritual topics with the relationships that I have. Woo hoo! But, what I want to blog about is a funny thing that happened on Saturday.

First of all, to comment on the spiders portion of the title, I want to say that I am NOT afraid of spiders in any way shape or form but last night I got home about 11:50 to a hairy good sized spider on my doorstep. How gross! I am not afraid of spiders in general but I just get a little freaked out when they are large enough that you can see the hair they are covered in. Ick!

Enough on that, the funny story happened at Merediths house last week. Picture this, two women staying alone in a huge house for a week. Well Saturday night was the end of that week and we had just had people over and were up chatting. Well, I went downstairs at 1:30 a.m. to grab my purse and head to bed when I noticed that the door coming inside from the garage was OPEN and neither of us had opened it. I bolted upstairs and in a broken voice told Meredith that the door was open and I had no idea how it got that way and that I was freaked out. She was talking to her boyfriend on the phone and he responded to our fright by laughing. Well we were not laughing. Meredith made me baracade and shut her door while we developed a plan. Seh let Ryan (her boyfriend) go and told him that if she didn't call him back in 5 minutes to call her back and if she didn't answer to worry. Then, we proceeded to call all the guys numbers meredith had in her phone (all two of them). We couldn't get a hold of anyone so we braved it on our own.

We decided after about 5 minutes had passed that we needed to go shut the door and check the house and that we needed weapons. So we grabbed her 5 pound weights and left the room. we searched every room and every corner of the house often yelling as we opened doors to scare the intruders. We discovered nothing and decided to leave all the lights on the main level on. We went back upstairs to complete the search and call Ryan back. Well... 20 minutes had elapsed.

In the meantime Ryan (in an act of protection) had called the Manhattan police department and when he got their answering machine decided to call Jen and Joel. CRAZY!?? We felt really bad but in the end got quite the laugh out of it!:)

In other news, this weekend is K-States big evangelistic camp out. It is called Burly Girly. I can't wait!

Blogging: A summer thing?

I have noticed recently that many friends of mine who blogged faithfully this summer have tapered off in their blogging. I have also noticed that I have as well. Interesting. Maybe it was a good means of communication in the summer but now that the majority of us are back in our comfort zones with our friends we don't feel the need to keep up a description of our lives. Or maybe we are just doing more productive things with our time. Hmm... Something to ponder.

To let you know why I have been slow at blogging this year, it is because of my distaste for using the dial-up internet at my host family's house. Not only do they have dial-up but they also have a limited number of hours of dial-up. Thus, I don't check my email as often or post to my blog for fear of using all their hours. So, I apologize if this has been disappointing to some.

BUT I am in Omaha this weekend so it seems a good opportunity to keep you posted. I had this whole weekend off. I spent Friday afternoon/ evening in Lincoln hanging out with friends that I miss SO much. I spent the afternoon with Tracy, ate dinner with some folks, went to Navigators and then stayed up until 5 a.m. chatting with Sonya. It was really really fun. The trip hurt my heart a bit because things are different and will continue to be and that is sad as much as it is exciting to move onto a new stage.

To update ya'll on campus life, it has been a tough week again. I am starting to understand why I find it tough though and that is helping. I find myself having a tough time with the pace that the friendships I am forming are moving at. They are moving much more slowly than I wish they would. I want to have tons of people who want to be my friend, spend time together, talk about deep stuff and Jesus - NOW. But, I am reminded that takes time to form. I see my impatience SO clearly and have been forced to ask myself if I believe in the gospel enough to perservere. It was good to go to church in Omaha this weekend and see that I am the only one who is putting that much pressure on myself. None of my suppporters I talked to back here think I should have really deep relationships yet. I seem to have the biggest expectations of anyone.

The other stuff God has been doing in my personal life is in the form of teaching me deep things about trials. If you check out 1 Peter 1, it discusses how trials come so that our faith may be proved genuine and result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus is revealed. Later in the passage it goes on to tell us to set our hope FULLY on the grace that we will be given when Christ is revealed. As I have been facing various trials and insecurities related to ministry, I have been forced to set my hope fully on Christ. In and of itself, moving to Manhattan has forced me to set my hope on Christ and not on my friends, people who "need" me, people who enjoy me, my family, knowing the campus, having plans on the weekend, etc.

SOOOOOOOOOOO.... that's the news. I have been meeting lots of folks and trying to be patient to watch the relationships form that God wants to work in.

Have a beautiful Sunday.